Tepper Isn't Going Out: A Novel

by Calvin Trillin

  Shanahan nodded. “It’s a tough town, all right,” he said.

  “Actually, a man who came to see me when I was parked on Houston Street, a man close to my age, told me that he still felt tremendous guilt because when he was a young bachelor in New York he used to rate girls, as we then called young women, according to whether they were worth moving his car for,” Tepper said. “He lived in Murray Hill and he kept his car on the street. If one of his friends offered to fix him up with some girl, this fellow would say, ‘Is she G.F.T. level?’ That meant Good for Tomorrow. In other words, if his car was already parked in a spot that was good for tomorrow, would it be worth giving up the spot to take this particular girl to, say, City Island to eat steamed clams. Now this man has three grown daughters and times have changed and he understands all that and he feels guilty about having had an attitude that he now sees as demeaning to women.”

  “So what did you tell him?”

  “Well, in the first place, I told him that in those years alternate-side parking in Murray Hill was already no picnic.”

  Shanahan nodded. “So there was nothing frivolous about making that a part of his decision,” he said.

  “That’s right,” Tepper said. “Not at all. And also I asked him about meeting the girl he married. It turns out that he met her at a Sunday brunch one of his neighbors was having, at a time when his car was good until the next Thursday, because the parking rules were suspended for some national holiday on Tuesday. But she wanted to go to Coney Island to ride the roller coaster, so he took her. And he knew then that she was the girl he was going to marry. Why else would he have given up that spot? So I reminded him that the G.F.T. system had turned out to have at least one nice result: he was able to realize when he’d met the girl of his dreams. They just celebrated their thirty-fifth anniversary, and he told her that, even after all these years, if she wanted to go somewhere and he had a spot that was good for an entire week because it was one of those years when the Solemnity of the Ascension and Memorial Day and Shavuot all fell just right, he would move his car for her. I thought it was a lovely thing to say, even though, as it happens, he now keeps his car in a garage.”

  “It’s the thought that counts,” Shanahan said.

  They sat silently for a moment or two, and then Tepper said, “So what is it you wanted to see me about? You weren’t very specific on the telephone.”

  “Well, for the past few years I’ve been working mainly for Mayor Ducavelli,” Shanahan said. “Taking surveys. But in the political business, people who take surveys become advisers. So I’ve been one of his advisers, really.”

  “Can I ask you a question about that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you go to some of the functions the mayor has in Gracie Mansion?”

  “Yes. Now and then.”

  “That always seemed to me the hardest neighborhood for parking in the whole city,” Tepper said. “In the eighties, way over east there. I’ve logged some circling time over there. So how do you find a spot when you go to one of those functions?”

  “Well, actually, I usually take a cab,” Shanahan said. “I usually go there straight from the office in a cab.”

  Tepper nodded. “That neighborhood’s a killer,” he said. “A killer.”

  “Anyway,” Shanahan went on. “It looks to me like you and the mayor are on a collision course. There are some of us around the mayor who think he’s making a big mistake. But I honestly don’t think he can help himself. Ironically, even though you seem to be a stickler for obeying the law, he sees you as a sort of advance man for what he thinks of as the forces of disorder.”

  Tepper nodded. “The mayor hasn’t been very complimentary,” he said. “Although I’ve tried to assure my wife that he doesn’t mean all those things he says about me personally.”

  “The mayor sometimes gets carried away when he goes into what we call his attack mode,” Shanahan said. “Mr. Tepper, what I think you understand here is that there’s no way to stop the mayor from pursuing this collision course. I want to assure you, by the way, that he really had nothing to do with the summons you got for hailing a taxi in the street—that was a total coincidence—but I wouldn’t deny that he’s capable of that sort of thing. Once he gets on something, he is sort of, well, single-minded. So what I was wondering is whether there’s any way to head you off in a slightly different direction. Because if this collision happens, the mayor will cause you as much trouble as he can, but I think he’d be causing himself even more trouble. I happen to think Mayor Ducavelli has been a pretty good mayor. Oh, yes, he’s a little paranoid. And a little vindictive. And egotistical. And self-righteous. And stubborn. The man is definitely stubborn. But, all in all, I think he’s been good for the city. It’s sort of my job to help him get elected again, but I genuinely think his reelection would be a good thing for the city—all in all.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re asking me,” Tepper said.

  “Well, look, Mr. Tepper. I’ve been in politics all my life. My father was a precinct captain in Queens. I may talk all sorts of fancy computer-model talk when I present one of the surveys I take, but the sort of politics I understand best is the old-fashioned kind: if we need something from you, we find out what we can do for you. Nothing illegal, of course. Nothing sneaky. Just simple old-fashioned quid pro quo. I know you have a perfect right to park in whatever legal spot you want to park in. What I’m saying is that if you decided you didn’t want to do that anymore it would be a great help to us. It would be a great help to the mayor—although, God knows, he has no idea I’m talking to you about this and if he did he’d throw one of his hissy fits.”

  “So you’re saying that if I decided that I was no longer interested in reading the newspaper in my car from time to time, it would be a favor to you and you’d be willing to do me a favor in return.”

  “Exactly,” Shanahan said.

  “What favor did you have in mind?”

  “Well, Mr. Tepper,” Shanahan said. “Frankly, I sort of thought you might have one in mind yourself.”

  Tepper shook his head. “No,” he said.

  “I don’t suppose you have a nephew who you think might be good in some city job?” Shanahan said. “Or maybe you’ve got a building permit application that needs a little expediting?”

  Tepper shook his head again. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid not. I don’t have any nephews, and I’m not building anything.”

  Shanahan nodded. “Well, it was a thought,” he finally said.

  “It was nice of you to ask, anyway,” Tepper said.

  Shanahan reached for his umbrella, put his hand on the door handle, and then paused. “Tell me,” he said, “I’m curious. If you’re trying to sell something that appeals specifically to rich people—let’s say one of those rare-wine-of-the-month clubs—do you just send a mailing to everyone in the 10021 zip code anyway and not worry about hitting a lot of not-so-rich people who happen to live there because they have rent-controlled apartments?”

  “Well, it’s the firms that use what we call horizontal lists who have to be concerned about that,” Tepper said. “They start with a sort of master list that essentially includes everybody in the entire country—a list that’s created from motor vehicle licenses or telephone directories—and then they chop it up by neighborhoods according to a lot of information that’s available from the census on income and median age and all that. We deal with what’re called vertical lists. If we’re trying to sell people rare wine, we might test a list of, say—”

  “People who have subscribed to a magazine for gourmets,” Shanahan said.

  “Exactly,” Tepper said. “Then charge-account customers of fancy glassware stores. Then lists that have to do in some way with backgammon. For some reason, there’s a connection between wine snobbery and backgammon playing. There are a lot of odd connections like that in our business.”

  “You know, I heard a story years ago from somebody in the political trade about a list of peopl
e who sent away for this car-cleaning cloth.”

  “The story is true,” Tepper said.

  “Best fund-raising list for the Republican National Committee?”

  “Democrats, too, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “You know a lot about this, Mr. Tepper.”

  “Well, forty years. . . .”

  Shanahan nodded again. “I enjoyed our little chat,” he said. “Listen, if you are going to continue parking, I might drop around sometime, if you don’t mind. I don’t mean to talk about you and the mayor—that was just a thought—but just to talk.”

  “It would be my pleasure,” Tepper said.

  26. Hearing

  MURRAY TEPPER TOOK A LEISURELY STROLL FROM THE subway stop at Bowling Green to the new federal courthouse, an imposing building not far from the little park that separates the courthouses of both state and federal government from Chinatown. Tepper’s memories of the area were mostly from being on jury duty. Any number of times over the years, he had walked across the little park, past the funeral home where an Italian street band sometimes stood waiting to lead a Chinese funeral, and into Chinatown for lunch. He often wondered what it was like being called to jury duty in cities whose courts weren’t next to Chinatown. Once, after Ray Fannon had been on jury duty, he wrote in his column, “If the time comes when I have to stand before the bar of justice and be judged by a jury of my peers—if the time comes, that is, when one Republican too many explains how much better off we’d all be if the rich paid less in taxes, and I get violent—I can only hope that the judgment comes in Lower Manhattan and in the afternoon, after those good citizens serving as jurors have their bellies full of dumplings and are feeling so blessed that a little mercy might be in order.”

  Ruth and Jack and Howard Gordon had all asked Tepper if he wanted company. He had told them all not to bother. It was, after all, only a brief hearing on his lawyer’s request for a temporary injunction against city officials, to prevent them from prosecuting him under the 1911 ordinance prohibiting unlicensed demonstrations and exhibitions. “As long as the people on the subway don’t realize that they’re in the presence of an unlicensed exhibition, I think I can make it down there all right by myself,” he’d assured them.

  As he approached Pearl Street, he heard some chanting, but he couldn’t make out the words. Coming closer, he thought he heard his name in the chant. It was, in fact, his name. He could see the demonstrators now, in front of the federal court building. They were marching in a loop on the sidewalk, like strikers picketing their place of employment, and they were chanting, “Tepper isn’t going out, Tepper isn’t going out, Tepper isn’t going out.” Some of them were holding placards that showed a picture of him in his Chevy under the legend hands off murray. Standing partway up the stairs was Bill Carmody, dressed in khakis and a T-shirt from an onion festival in South Georgia and a baseball hat from Del’s Quik-Stop in Cosgrove, Oklahoma. He was acting as chant leader, waving his arms like the director of a chorale, although the demonstrators—there seemed to be about fifty of them—didn’t appear to need much help in keeping up a strong, rhythmic chant.

  When the Tepper supporters spotted Tepper himself, they stopped chanting and began cheering. They broke ranks and surged toward him. A few of them wanted to carry him up the stairs and into the building on their shoulders, but he managed to convince them that he actually preferred walking. He politely said “No thank you” to three or four television reporters who jammed a microphone toward him and asked him how he felt. A number of the demonstrators followed him into the building, leaving their signs with those who remained behind. As he entered the front door, Tepper could hear one of those remaining outside explain to a television reporter, “The man’s mad as hell. He is mad as hell. . . .”

  “No, he’s not mad as hell,” someone else in the group said. “He’s just trying to read the afternoon paper in peace, for Christ’s sake. We’re the ones who are mad as hell.”

  Almost every seat in the courtroom was taken, although it was a vast room, much larger than any of the state courtrooms Tepper was familiar with from jury duty. There were microphones both at the witness stand and at the lawyers’ tables. Huge windows presented a beautiful view of midtown Manhattan to the north. Jeremy Thornton, the attorney from the Civil Liberties Union, was waiting for Tepper at the defense counsel’s table. Tepper started to shake hands, but Thornton grabbed him in a hug instead. Next to Thornton was an efficient looking young woman who was busily going through a small hillock of legal documents on the table in front of her, as if confirming that everything was in its proper order. When Thornton introduced her as his colleague, Eleanor Brown, she said hello to Tepper as quickly as possible and then got back to her documents. Behind her was a sort of supermarket cart filled with more documents. Tepper couldn’t imagine how a case that had yet to come to court had already generated so much paper.

  As Tepper sat down in the chair Thornton indicated, he noticed Victor Hessbaugh at the next table, accompanied by two or three assistants. Hessbaugh nodded politely. Tepper nodded in return and then turned to Jeremy Thornton, who seemed eager to bring him up-to-date.

  “What we got here today, Murray, is a motion for a temporary injunction and a request for a hearing on a permanent injunction,” Thornton said. “We ask the judge to keep the city from enforcing this ordinance—the one they used to issue you the summons—while we wait to get on her calendar for a hearing on a permanent injunction. We like to come prepared, which is why Eleanor here has a cart that makes her look like she’s about to hit the checkout counter at Balducci’s on the day before Thanksgiving, but, if everything goes the way it usually goes, this shouldn’t be complicated.”

  The clerk of the court stood, and the audience in the courtroom became quiet. “All rise,” the clerk said. “The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York is now in session, Judge Lorraine Bernardi presiding.”

  Everyone stood for the entrance of the judge—a handsome woman in her late forties, with dark hair shading to gray. She sat down, and, at a signal from the clerk, the others in the courtroom sat down as well. Judge Bernardi looked down at those gathered at the counsel tables before her. She said good morning and then said, “Well, Mr. Thornton, it looks like you’re up.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Thornton said, rising to speak. “What we’re asking here, on behalf of my client, Mr. Murray Tepper, who is seated here next to me, is a temporary injunction to prevent the city of New York from enforcing, in a completely arbitrary and capricious manner, this ordinance—which is supposedly on the books for the purpose of keeping order but is, if I may say so, so broadly drawn as to be virtually meaningless—against Mr. Tepper, who has, in fact, broken no law, city, state, or federal.”

  “If I may, Your Honor,” Victor Hessbaugh said when the judge looked his way. “Mr. Tepper was given a citation on East Seventy-eighth Street, following an incident on Houston Street in which his presence caused a serious altercation. Then he purposely returned to Houston Street—”

  “As part of a conspiracy to buy herring salad,” Thornton interjected.

  “Mr. Thornton,” the judge said sternly. “You will wait to be recognized by the court before you speak.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor,” Thornton said.

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Hessbaugh said. “Your Honor, the city has a responsibility to keep order on its own streets, and would strongly oppose this motion. I would be happy to outline in detail the precedents in law for this ordinance at the court’s convenience.”

  Judge Bernardi studied the documents before her for a few moments. Finally, she said, “Exactly where on Seventy-eighth Street, Mr. Tepper?”

  It took Tepper a moment to realize he was being addressed directly by the judge, and then he said, “Between Lexington and Park, Your Honor.”

  The judge smiled slightly and nodded. “I used to look for spots in that area myself some years ago,” she said. “When I stayed home with my children f
or a few years, before going back into practice, it was my task to move the family car from one side of the street to another. I used to go fifteen or twenty minutes early to the side that would be okay the next morning, and read law journals until it was safe to leave the car. Tell me, is it difficult to park around there these days?”

  “I would say that parking for the evening is not a problem, Your Honor, but parking so that you’re good for tomorrow is not an easy task,” Tepper said.

  “Still a lot of Diplomatic Plates Only in that area?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Tepper said. “I’m afraid there are still a lot of spaces taken from the public and reserved for diplomatic plates.”

  Judge Bernardi nodded slowly, as if Tepper’s information had confirmed what she’d expected to hear. The two lawyers, who were still standing, glanced around, as if for some signal about what they were supposed to do. Finally, the judge said, “Well, gentlemen, the first time I can hear you present your arguments in this matter in the full detail for which you are both justly known is four weeks from today. Let me ask you something, Mr. Tepper.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Tepper said.

  “I’m going to grant this temporary injunction,” the judge said. “But I am a little concerned about the potential for disturbance the city attorney has mentioned. People feel strongly about this issue, as we can see from the demonstrators in front of the building. We’re getting into summer. It’s hot. Tempers sometimes are short, particularly among people who have been circling for a spot and find nothing but Diplomatic Plates Only signs. I wonder how you would feel about—in a strictly voluntary way, without jeopardizing any of your rights here—not parking in some of these places—Seventy-eighth Street, Houston Street, et cetera—until we have our hearing.”